I didn’t see President Obama at the Thomas Cook Canada launch the other night in Toronto. I may have missed him though, because of the milling throngs of extinct travel agents being wooed at row after row of travel supplier booths.
It’s not clear if Obama really hates the travel industry or if one of his speechwriters ended up in Sydney, Nova Scotia instead of that other Sydney due to a keystroke error and has vowed eternal revenge.
Whatever the reason for Obama’s recent insert-foot comments, the hundreds of travel sellers I saw this week looked more animated than automated, and I can usually spot the live ones.
But as Richard Earls from Travel Research Online puts it, retail travel has become the ‘invisible industry,’ and part of that is due to “an abysmally poor PR job” from the industry itself.
A case in point arrived by e-mail Monday from the CITC’s Steve Gillick. In a letter to the Globe and Mail, Gillick complains that a travel columnist should have contacted him instead of speaking to American travel experts in response to a reader question. His point is valid, but Gillick couldn’t help insulting Globe writer Karan Smith’s intelligence several times – which means he won’t likely get that call next time either.
As Mamma Gabbalot used to say in her occasional sober moments: “Respect has to be earned.”
